Malta-based company expands operations in Milan

Newsprint Italia, Italy's biggest newspaper digital printing company, a joint venture between the IPS Group and Malta-based Miller Group, has installed a second Kodak Versamark VL4200 printing system in Milan.

The Kodak Versamark VL4200 digital printer
The Kodak Versamark VL4200 digital printer

The joint-venture now has a total of four digital presses in Italy - two in Rome and two in Milan, the country's business and industrial capital.

In order to better serve the Italian market, the Miller Group (Malta) joined forces with the IPS Group (Meckenheim / Germany), an international provider of publishing services, whose subsidiary Messinter is Italy's foremost newspaper and magazine importer.

The Newsprint Group now has a total of seven Kodak inkjet presses in action in Europe.

The first three are doing duty in Malta, Cyprus, and Tenerife.

Malcolm Miller and Dieter Wirtz, managing director of the IPS Group, are joint CEOs of Newsprint Italia S.r.l.

Newsprint Italia is running two digital press lines at each of its Milan and Rome sites - all with offline finishing provided by a combination of folding and collating equipment from Hunkeler and Heidelberg.

"I believe there will always be paper news," Miller Group chief executive Malcolm Miller said, adding that his company which always worked in the newspaper business for many years, is witnessing a drop in newspaper circulation.

"However, we are convinced this is a great business opportunity for us. Digitally printed international and regional newspaper titles supported by localised distribution will create opportunities for publishers to expand their business in new ways and build new business strategies," he said.

According to specialised media, the two Italian sites print almost a billion pages annually.

All IT systems and the workflow are managed and controlled from the Malta facility. Every night, thousands of newspapers are printed in Milan and Rome and distributed to key outlets in Italy, Switzerland, and other neighbouring markets.

Distribution management is taken care of by Messinter, the IPS Group's Milan subsidiary, which delivers to kiosks in shopping malls and supermarkets as well as to airports, bus and train stations, and other relevant outlets.

The plan is to offer publishers across Europe short-run solutions particularly for expensive and late-arrival destinations where conventional newspaper distribution has insurmountable drawbacks.